Poetry of the Waste

Over the pile of rubbish, sits a two year old
shrieking with glee as his hands toss egg-shells,
toffee wrappers, orange peels, cans of coke.
The wealth of textures, colors, smells
differs from the grumbling sensation he shares
with seven others in their one-room home.

In the pile of rubbish, a seven year old forages for buns,
half-eaten bananas, unfinished soda drinks & thanks
heavens for abundance. The teenager hunts
for sacks, shirts, torn socks, handkerchiefs, underwear, rags.
These tatters of overused linen that fill her plastic bags
her mother will sew into blankets,
or mattresses or jholas or garments.

Within the pile of rubbish are books, bags, pens, gaskets,
utensils, beer bottles, toothbrushes, shoes, combs, three-legged
chairs, electronic goods, scrap metal, love-letters, baskets,
pencils, newspapers, and their father cannot stop lecturing
about the poetry of the waste, of lotuses in the muck,
of a famous future that he dreams of unearthing
for the children in that very garbage-heap one day.


--

First appeared in Indian Review, Spring 2012

Moonch Ke Din Chale Gaye (Hindi मूंछ के दिन चले गए)

मूंछ के दिन चले गए

पकड़ने के लिए, झाँकने के लिए

गिरेबान कहाँ से लायें,

पहनावा ही बदल चूका है,

अब पगड़ी न रही

उछल चुकी है, बिक चुकी है,

गमछे तक नहीं,

यदा कदा चमचे, चौकीदार नज़र आते हैं 

मूंछ के दिन चले गए

बस पूँछें नज़र आती हैं |

विलायती लेबल है सिर्फ,

माल अपना है, कपास अपना है,

दर्जी, मंझोला, दलाल, बनिया

और शर्ट-पैंट में कैद कस्टमर

और भूखा जुलाहा अपना है

सोचो ! परदेशी के हक़ में बकते

बिक चुके स्वदेशी के पहरेदार नज़र आते हैं !

मूंछ के दिन चले गए

बस पूँछें नज़र आती हैं |

समझो न तो सिर्फ घास है, 

खेती है, पर जानो तो इश्क है,

सत्ता है, हुनर का ऐलान है,

हस्ती की बस्ती नाक के नीचे

नाक के स्तर और विस्तार का 

हक़ और हिम्मत का निशान है

पर अब मस्तंडे मुन्छ्मुंडे नज़र आते हैं |

मूंछ के दिन चले गए

बस पूँछें नज़र आती हैं |

चिकनाई का घमंड करते हैं

कोई इरादा पर ठहरता नहीं

इन चहरों पर सिर्फ फिसलन हैं

जब सोचने को दाड़ी का सहारा नहीं, 

तो कैसे विचार दिमाग से उतर 

उंगलियों, मुट्ठियों में करतब दिखाएँ? 

बस फोटो में खुश-परेशान नज़र आते हैं |

मूंछ के दिन चले गए

बस पूँछें नज़र आती हैं |

मर्द है तो बालों पे फक्र कर,

सीने पे, बाहों में, फसल कर

उबटन नौटंकी वालों को छोड़

प्राकृतिक यौवन पर फक्र कर

टैगोर, शिवाजी, अकबर, मूसा जैसे

प्रवर्तक, रसिक, पथिक, कवि कहाँ हैं?

बस फ़िल्मी नायको के नक़लचि नज़र आते हैं |

मूंछ के दिन चले गए

बस पूँछें नज़र आती हैं |

खुद को जान, हर रोंगटे को पहचान

कितना मुलायम चर्म नहीं, क्या मर्म है

हर इंच पर पिछलग्गू बनकर

उस्तरा चलना छोड़ सके तो छोड़

पर कोई रोके, तो मुंडवा कर मूंछे, सर,

अपने जज्बे, जिद, जौहर का दर्शन कर

सच इंकलाबी तो भीड़ में दूर से नज़र आते हैं|

पर मूंछ के दिन चले गए

बस पूँछें नज़र आती हैं |

The Battle of the Monster Ant and a Black Widow Spider

(Dedicated to Vishnu Sharma, and his distant grandsons 
                        like Aesop, Le Fontaine & Borges)

When the monster ant challenged a black widow spider,
in a forbidden corner of a hunter’s lodge...
Though ants of the size of a rice grain are common,
imagine an ant larger than a popcorn. (Applause!)

Before the morbid duel of arthropods can ensue,
remember what I narrate is as true as sky is blue.

For half-a-billion years, spider-webs enraptured
ants mid-flight. The spiders feasted
on the juices of the proletariat ants
but it seemed tonight, the fable

could turn. Anxious house-flies implanted
cameras on their backs to telecast
the apocalyptic event. Rows and rows
of rice-size ants gathered on floor
to watch the duel ‘live’ on the ceiling-sky.

Ants used spherical lenses made of bubbles
to magnify this distant fantasy!
The death-match was to be fought
without any referee mediating;
Fangs and formic acid of the ant

against the sticky web and the guile
of the spider. The webmaster said,
“One act of heroism, one idea, the will
or virtue or the skill of a single being,
can transform the universe.

A victory for the monster ant threatens
the hierarchy of food-chains, and when fear
from the faces of victims vanishes, a despot
dies too.” Rousing itself thus, the spider
accepted the tantrums and terms

of the duel-of-insects. “For gory, and for glory”,
said the monster ant, “shall we fight”.
‘Give it back to the webmaster tonight’,
sang the ants in unison. The war began,
when the chief camera-fly, said: “Cheese!”

Battle-ready flying monster ant shot a jet
of formic acid into the spider’s compound
eye. Though noxious fumes clouded
the spider’s collection of miniature lenses,
webmaster retaliated with its spit-like

stringy fluid. But these abdomen spurts
from the blinded weaver missed the ant.
The monster ant now aimed its acidic jet
at the spinneret from where oozes the complex
fluid that turns into web. In the mid-flight

the two jets collided, creating fishbones and drops
that exploded on hitting the floor. Then ants dispersed,
and returned with acid-proof, transparent, bullet-proof,
omniphobic umbrellas. The nervy flies struggled
to keep their high-speed cameras rolling.

Both spider and monster ant were starved
for ammunition, and this was a battle
of wits (as much as it was of fluid
mechanics). The ardent ant decided
that a few bulls-eyes at the head

were its surest bet, and attacked meticulously
till the acid ate through the spider’s thorax.
Celebrations began when the spider fell,
but in the pell-mell, the monster ant itself
got trapped in a web of its dead nemesis.

The Queen Ant, adept in blue-blood politics,
now emerged and distracted her ignoramus subjects.
High on tequila, french fries and candy, ants danced below,
while the monster ant perished after a struggle --
a martyr carcass trapped in destiny's web.

In the recording of death-rattle captured by a camera
left-on by carelessness, the dying monster ant
proclaimed: “I curse you o thankless fellow-ants,
if the spiders were brutal killers so far, in future
they will be freakier and worse!”

First published in Indian Review, 2012

Volunteer Our Story

In every bazaar, in various avatars, I see, I hear our story.
They sell, enact in streets & houses everywhere our story.

I have long forgotten the specific words you said.
But in gossip, in surreal phrasings I volunteer our story.

A spicy beginning, raunchy moments with musical interludes;
even to the climax, Bollywoodish seemed our affair, our story.

Quite a pang I feel when people talk about broken-hearts.
Just for variety’s sake, could have been singular our story.

‘No resemblance to living or dead’, I claim, my dearest.
On the page, I let my impartial memory steer our story.

Promise of secrecy was sacrosanct, my idol I worshipped you!
But it was my silent veneer that let the society infer our story.

Does the time travel on a Hindu bicycle: birth, rebirth, birth, rebirth?
Don’t you get bored, O Ishwar, repeating each year, our story?

Maugham’s Mildred, Dicken’s Estella, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina -
How come all the writers know the heroines insincere, our story?

Are even nations like men who make friends, foes, are born to die?
Are even nations cursed, ordained to share our fate severe, our story?

As a detached outsider, it is easy to see my voyage was doomed.
Looking back, I myself wonder, why did I engineer our story?

No disasters, animosities, no catacombs, bastards lurk in our story.
Why is Vivek writing ghazals? Has he begun to revere our story?

The poem first appeared in Indian Review, Jan 2012

Naked Translated World

Your body flows over mine, like the Ganga over the Himalayas.
Your splash against the roots of my precepts,
and erode my pristine ego, to have your own way.

The vistas of your flesh are like the fields of freshly harvested corn.
The remnant stalks curse my every step,
and when I tread over you, I move, as if, on a maze of thorns.

As I bite, every apple in your tissue moans.
My hunger hunts for the exotic animals
that run wild in your voluptuous terrains.

You urge me on like Krishna, rousing,
driving me to battles where the Pandavas of desire
chase the Kauravas of custom into endless duels.

Your bones turn into embers. I encounter a fire
that smolders me. Your embraced body
crumbles like ash. I wake up anointed by your smell.

Naked, you are like acres of sarson blossoms on the banks of Beas.
Naked, you are like Santoor symphonies motioned by Sharma's caresses.
Naked, you are like Leh and Spiti, valleys and hills, raw beauty, untouched.

Notes: * Pandavas and Kaurava’s were the brothers at war in the epic Mahabharata. Krishna was an avatar of Vishnu. In Bhagavada Gita, he explains the importance of action (karma) and duty (dharma) to Arjuna (one of the Pandavas). By doing to, he motivates Arjuna to go to the war, and do his duty, even it involves the death of his own kin, friends and teachers. Sarson refers to mustard flowers,  Beas is a river in Punjab. Shiv Kumar Sharma plays the instrument Santoor.

First published in Nefarious Ballerina (Print edition).

Books read in 2012

Read in 2012 (20 = 12 + 8; NF 3) 

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS -- FICTION (3): Tin Drum by Gunter Grass, Brand by Ibsen, The Golden Ass by Apuleius (translated by P. G. Walsh),

NOVEL / FICTION IN ENGLISH (3): Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Seize the Day by Saul Bellow, (Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K Jerome),

NON-FICTION (1): (Baburnama) .

ENGLISH POETRY (4): A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud (trans by Louis Varese),  The Conference of the Birds by Attar (translated by Dick Davis), Hagar before the Occupation, Hagar after the Occupation by Amal Al-Jubouri (translated by Rebecca Gayle Howell & Husam Qaisi).

Hindi / Urdu / Punjabi (5 = 3+2; 0): Abhishapt by Yashpal, Ek Chaadar Maili si by Rajendra Singh Bedi, Meghadoot by Kalidasa


Badlon ka Salaam Leta Hun by Gopaldas Neeraj, Yashodhra by Maithalisharan Gupt, 


Sanskrit (0+2): Chanakyaneeti, Meghadootam,

PHILOSOPHY / RELIGION / MYTHOLOGY  (1+0+0):  (Vasistha's Yoga translated by Swami Venkatesananda), .

MAHABHARATA (by Mahrishi Ved Vyas; tr. by Kisari Mohun Ganguly) (0/18): 

POPULAR SCIENCE / ECONOMICS (1): Flow by Phillip Ball.

Don’t go counting your steps

Don’t go like a spent monsoon cloud. Stay!

Clear turmeric stains from this table. Drink

your ginger tea. Ma bought this bone china cup

from the Chandni Chowk of her youth

for my dowry half-a-century ago.

Remember, once you were nine and I was six.

Don’t go with bushels of unsaid over your head.

Remember how you carried ten pitchers a day

from the river to home, without spilling a drop.

The neighbors cursed their daughters for managing

only three spilled pitchers each.

Present is too imperfect. Let it recede

into memory where, like your husband’s beard,

it will acquire a fragrant smoothness that his snoring

nearness never kept.

Don’t go counting your steps. Your trek will turn sublime,

if you forget what you leave behind.

First published in Muse India, Fall 2011